DATCS at Wichita Falls is our northern location in Texas. We do DOT Consortium, DOT Drug and Alcohol Compliance. Click show more for a interactive map which you can use to find your way here! Our hours are 8 am to 5 pm, Monday through Friday but we also offer weekend and after hours services for many occasions. If you have any questions or concerns, call us at 903-234-1136 or 903-720-2521 for after hours emergencies.
Location : 4701 SW Parkway, #18, Wichita Falls, TX 76310

Witnesses described the 17-year-old boy as "shaking, growling, foaming at the mouth." According to police reports, Elijah Stai was at a McDonald's with his friend when he began to feel ill. Soon after, he "started to smash his head against the ground" and began acting "possessed," according to a witness. Two hours later, he had stopped breathing.
The Grand Forks, North Dakota teenager's fatal overdose has been blamed on a drug called 2C-I. The night before Stai's overdose, another area teen, Christian Bjerk, 18, was found face down on a sidewalk. His death was also linked to the drug.
2C-I--known by its eerie street name "Smiles"--has become a serious problem in the Grand Forks area, according to local police. Overdoses of the drug have also be reported in Indiana and Minnesota. But if the internet is any indication, Smiles is on the rise all over the country.
DEA cracks down on...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 17, 2012 -- What many are beginning to notice lately is that synthetic drugs are rising in the ranks as far as dependency and medical issues are concerned. The days of cocaine and heroin being the bad guys on the block are changing as technology and the population rises. There are many things that could be accredited to the influx of drug addiction in the last decade, including the economy hardships thousands are facing. But who could have imagined that bath salts and synthetic marijuana would turn up on the list of dangerous psychoactive drugs? Yet it’s true.
Countless emergency care facilities across the nation are facing more and more cases of synthetic drug abuse. A multitude of these cases have yielded violent outbursts, and aggressive and abusive behaviors. Health care professionals and law enforcement have made note of this side effect to be prevalent in encounters....

Prescription drug abusers turn to cheaper, more dangerous choice
The tough economy is influencing Metro Detroiters' illegal drug choices, experts say, with prescription drug abusers turning to a cheaper — but more dangerous — alternative: heroin.
During economic downturns, drug users go bargain-hunting like other consumers, said Lt. Darcy Leutzinger, head of Warren's Special Investigation Division, which handles narcotics.
"People are going for what they can afford; the economy drives it," he said. "When times are tough, and the drug prices get too high, people want more bang for their buck. Heroin is cheaper than pills, and it's a high that lasts a long time."
Prescription drugs such as Vicodin sell for as high as $15 a pill, depending on their strength, Leutzinger said. "OxyContin or the other heavy-duty painkillers can go for as high as $40 per pill on the street in the Detroit area, and as much as $60...

By Matthew Hendley
If you haven't heard a story recently about a naked person high on the chemicals known as "bath salts," you have not been paying attention.
Thanks to 23-year-old Sean-Paul Branscome, the Tempe Police Department is holding a press conference right now to warn the public about the dangers of bath salts.
That's because police say Brascome, 23, was slamming himself against walls while pacing on a sidewalk, before he got naked and went jogging through a neighborhood.
He would eventually tell police that he had ingested bath salts.
According to Tempe PD, the call came in Sunday morning about a man "walking up and down the sidewalk and throwing himself against walls" near Country Club Way and Guadalupe Road.
While police were still on the phone with whoever called, Brascome got rid of his clothes and started running around.
The cops set up a perimeter to catch him,...

13 Sobering Facts About Teen Substance Abuse
A new report finds that 76 percent of high school students have used tobacco, alcohol, marijuana, and other drugs, and one-fifth of them may be addicted. These alarming figures highlight the urgent need for parents and communities to help troubled teens.
Teen substance use is an epidemic of greater proportions than depression, bullying, and obesity, according to a new report by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University in New York City. CASA interviewed more than 2,500 high school students, parents, and school personnel, analyzed thousands of studies, and interviewed 50 leading experts in a broad range of fields to produce the comprehensive report, which unearthed some shocking statistics.
Among the findings: While the percentage of teens who smoke, drink, or use illegal drugs has declined since 1999, the number of youths who still do so is dangerously high....

One in eight older U.S. teenagers has used powerful painkiller drugs without prescriptions, and many of them start misusing the pills at age 16 or 17, earlier than was previously assumed, according to new research released on Monday. The findings published in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine are based on two national surveys that asked teenagers about their recent or lifetime use of prescription painkillers, which include highly addictive drugs such as oxycontin and codeine. For the full study, see: http://bit.ly/pD1ZHL Both medical and recreational use of such opioid drugs has increased across the United States over the last two decades, as have deaths due to painkiller overdoses. The new findings suggest that educational programs on the dangers of misusing painkillers should start earlier in high school, researchers said. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that 14,800 Americans died of an opioid overdose in 2008 - three...

POSTED: Friday, August 31, 2012 - 9:59am
Nicole Underwood Assistant News Director/ KETK News
CHEROKEE COUNTY — Marijuana plants up to 8 feet tall have been found within four patches of plants near the Angelina River, in eastern Cherokee County.
The plants were found on Thursday, August 30th.
Cherokee County investigators, DPS narcotics officers, DEA agents and the Texas National Guard participated in the search for the fields.
During the morning and early afternoon, two helicopter crews flew over heavily wooded areas searching for the fields.
The investigation is part of the Domestic Marijuana Eradication Program, or DME, which is dedicated to the eradication of domestically grown marijuana.
Around 2:45pm on Thursday, helicopter crews spotted a possible marijuana site near the Angelina River, about 1.5 miles south of FM 343, on the eastern border of Cherokee County.
Ground crews were alerted to the patch, and investigated the area.
They found a very large...

What is drug testing?
Some schools, hospitals, or places of employment conduct drug testing. There are a number of ways this can be done, including: pre-employment testing, random testing, reasonable suspicion/cause testing, post-accident testing, return to duty testing, and follow-up testing. This usually involves collecting urine samples to test for drugs such as marijuana, cocaine, amphetamines, PCP, and opiates.
Following models established in the workplace, some schools have initiated random drug testing and/or reasonable suspicion/cause testing. During random testing schools select, using a random process (like flipping a coin), one or more individuals from the student population to undergo drug testing. Currently, random drug testing can only be conducted among students who participate in competitive extracurricular activities. Reasonable suspicion/cause testing involves a school requiring a student to provide a urine specimen when there is sufficient evidence to suggest that the student may have used an illicit substance. Typically, this involves...

Teens who start smoking marijuana regularly experience what appear to be permanent declines in their IQs and other aspects of mental function, new research finds.
The study included information on more than 1,000 people born in New Zealand in 1972-1973. Participants took IQ and other mental functioning tests at age 13 -- before any had started smoking marijuana -- and then again at age 38.
Every few years, starting at age 18, participants were also asked about their use of marijuana and assessed for marijuana dependence. Marijuana dependence is defined as someone who feels they need to smoke more and more marijuana to get the same effect, who has tried to quit but can't or who keeps using even though the habit is causing them problems, such as with their health, family, work or school.
About 5% reported using marijuana more than once a week before age 18 or were considered...

Ninety percent of American high school students report that some of their classmates are using illicit drugs, including alcohol and tobacco, during the school day, a new survey found.
When asked to estimate how many were involved, these teens reported that about 17 percent of students -- roughly 2.8 million -- are abusing drugs during the school day, according to the survey.
"The findings are alarming but not surprising," said Bruce Goldman, director of substance abuse services at Zucker Hillside Hospital, in Glen Oaks, N.Y. "We know that teens abuse alcohol, cannabis, prescription medications. It makes sense that they do it at school where they congregate with their peers.
Goldman was not involved with the survey, which was released Wednesday by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University (CASAColumbia), in New York City.
The survey is a timely one, coming out soon after a U.S. government study...

The number of Americans who used illegal drugs or abused prescription medications rose last year to reach its highest level since 2002, a survey showed.
Nearly 22 million Americans aged 12 and older used illegal drugs in 2009, a rise of 9 percent from 2008, the survey conducted by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) found.
Some 7 million Americans older than 12 took prescription drugs for nonmedical reasons. The bulk of the abuse of prescription medications involved painkillers, which some 5.3 million Americans used off-label last year — a rise of 20 percent from 2002.
Among teens, the rate of nonmedical prescription painkiller use rose 17 percent year on the year, with most youngsters saying they got the meds from friends, family, or an unsecured medicine cabinet.
The rise in the use of illegal drugs was driven in large part by an increase...

(NaturalNews) There has been a recent epidemic of opium-addiction that is growing fast as one of America's drug problems. The CDC says this is not coming from foreign cartels, traffickers or drug dealers, but from the pharmacy that so many visit for prescribed medicines. These opiate-based drugs include Vicodin, Oxycontin, Oxycodone, and other opioid pain relievers. The CDC says that last year alone, enough of these drugs were prescribed to medicate each and every American adult with "five mg of hydrocodone (Vicodin and others), taken every four hours, for a month, and have led to over 40,000 drug overdose deaths."
Currently, there are more overdose deaths from these prescribed drugs than heroin and cocaine combined. Furthermore, the consumption of these drugs are costing health insurers approximately $72.5 billion annually. As many people know, the problem also lies in the fact that the underlying causes are not being managed, but rather just...

MONDAY Aug. 13, 2012 -- Among teens receiving treatment for substance abuse, many have used medical marijuana that was recommended for someone else, also known as "diverted" medical marijuana, a new study has found.
The study authors, from the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora, Colo., suggest that policy changes are needed to curb the improper use of medical marijuana by young people.
In conducting the study, lead author Stacy Salomonsen-Sautel and colleagues questioned 164 teens aged 14 to 18 at two adolescent substance abuse treatment programs in Denver about their use of medical marijuana. The investigators found that nearly 74 percent of the teens used marijuana that was recommended for someone else an average of 50 times.
Compared with teens who did not use medical marijuana, those who did began using the drug regularly at a younger age and were also more dependent on marijuana and showed more...

by Rachel on July 24, 2012
Have questions about addictions and treatment? Call LVH @ 1-800-884-1727 24/7.
President Obama signed the Synthetic Drug Abuse Prevention Act of 2012 placing synthetic compounds found in synthetic marijuana (spice, K-2), synthetic stimulants (bath salts) and hallucinogens under the Schedule I of Controlled Substances Act. When a drug is classified as Schedule I, it means that the drug has no medical use or purpose and should never be consumed. While under the influence of synthetic drugs people are committing ungodly acts and are in desperate need for help. Under this new Act, insurance companies may have to adjust policies to reflect whether or not to pay for bath salt and spice addicts to go to drug rehab.
Synthetic drug compounds, when ingested, cause devastating psychological and physical damage. Addicts intoxicated with bath salts and/or spice need medical attention and addiction treatment to eliminate use....